Category Archives: Delegates

First thoughts: Well, Hillary won by 10. I guess that means this superdelegate tracking is going to have to continue for a while.

Regarding the GOP delegate races, those results are a little spread out over the interwebs, so will require some time to aggregate. My favored candidate for my district– Jim McHale– did not win, but he did OK. Interestingly, in my district well-known insider Ken Davis, about whom many are less than enthused, was included on the GOP sample ballot as an endorsed delegate at the last second absent any appropriate vote, at least as far as this committeeman is aware.

While Mr. Davis did not win, he did siphon off 1300 votes which affected the ultimate results. There could be an explanation for this, but the most thorough one I’ve heard thus far is there was a “mix-up”, so an endorsement fell upon him by fiat, like manna from heaven. This will require more investigation. A very polite e-mail to the chairman of the Chester County GOP has thus far gone unanswered.

As for the rest of the Commonwealth, I believe there are at least some unendorsed delegates who have been elected, and not all of them are Paul-bearers. As Mr. Drudge says, developing…

Well, team, tomorrow is primary day in Pennsylvania. As you may have noticed, some of my projects here did not quite ripen. Work, fishing, and volunteering for Admiral Steve Kantrowitz, who is running for PA Senate 19, have intervened.

There’s nothing in this post for voters in the Dem. primary. Your vote matters, and if you’ve been paying attention there’s not much I can tell you about each candidate. I could tell you about what PA’s superdelegates are doing, but that shouldn’t be part of your equation.

As for those casting a meaningless PA presidential primary ballot, my recommendation is this: Remember, top of the ballot is legally meaningless, and the state GOP likes it that way. Down the ballot you will vote for delegates to the convention, who will cast a vote for your district in St. Paul.

If you live in my district, vote for Jim McHale. If you have the opportunity to vote for additional people, leave it blank. Generally, avoid most of the people pledged to Ron Paul, although God bless them for running and absolutely vote for them if you dig Dr. Paul. If you don’t, though, go to this page, also look at the GOP sample ballot you can get at your polling place, and vote for a person who is not endorsed by the party, and is not a Ron Paul supporter.

In my research I have determined it is those people who are most likely to have your district’s best interests at heart. As a group, the greatest fault of those people is they are running mostly because they think it would be fun to be a delegate at the convention. That’s their greatest fault. How we could go wrong with a delegation like that, I don’t know. Pass the bottle, and move to close!

The take away point from all this is what? That when it comes to electing the president of the United States, Republicans have to do lots of research and attempt to guess who might best reflect their values by proxy. If you wanted to design a system concentrating power and influence in the hands of people with roles the public doesn’t understand, this is it.

Bob Casey, you may or may not know, has not met an issue or controversy on which he can avoid fleeing, lest he reveal his characteristically equivocating and vapid core.

So after insisting he would avoid endorsing a presidential candidate, he changed his mind. And rather than endorse the candidate the large majority of his constituents tends to prefer, he decided to boldly get behind the national front-runner, apparently hoping to curry favor with St. Barack and lessen Clinton’s eventual victory in Pennsylvania

Of course, the percentage of people who really care about Bob Casey’s opinion is only marginally higher than the percentage of people– like me– who think much more highly of McCain because Phil Gramm is a close adviser.

I believe one is only allowed to display yard signs one month or less before an election. Jim McHale is on his game, because shortly after that deadline I spotted one of his signs at the intersection of Routes 113 and 401, which I presume is in the sixth congressional district, which is mostly in Chester County and Berks County.

While I don’t know anything about Mr. McHale, I hereby endorse his candidacy, which is my prerogative as a committeeman. He was not one of the rubber-stamp candidates ‘endorsed’ by the local GOP committee, and that’s good enough for me. As I live in his district, I think I’ll actually be able to vote to send him to the GOP national convention.

Of course, he could be a Paul supporter. Or perhaps he digs on the Huckster. Heck, he could be a Bircher for all I know.

What I do know is that he cares more than the endorsed candidates, for whom I’ve seen no signs. He will also likely be a straw that stirs the drink, and that’s what the GOP needs both here in Pennsylvania and nationally.

(In fact, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and run him some Google ads off of my account, linked directly to this post. This means if you’re reading this, Jim, you should pop me an e-mail at karlub at yahoo dot com to make sure I’m representing you accurately!)

Hillary has notched another PA superdelegate: US Rep. John Murtha. This should burnish her anti-Iraq War bona fides some.

Seems to me with Rev. Wright thing is not going to blow over easily for St. Barack. Perhaps a superdelegate-enabled win for her is not beyond the pale. I mean, there are lots of folks unsurprised by Wright’s hyperventilating. When I worked downtown there would be a group of African American religious nuts outside suburban station with a P/A every Friday, when the weather was warm, yelling pretty much the exact same stuff to passing commuters who would ignore them the same way they ignore panhandlers.

But all those blue-collar union types in the Democratic party surely have a problem with that type of rhetoric. Especially since part of Obama’s appeal is that he was supposed to get us past that sort of thing.